A strong month for used-car sales helped local car dealers sell the most vehicles in October since before the Great Recession.

In October, residents of Boone, Ogle, Stephenson and Winnebago counties residents registered 988 new and 3,915 used cars, trucks, SUVs and minivans after purchase. The new-vehicle registrations were 24.4 percent above October 2010 levels, and the used vehicles were a 17 percent increase from last year.

The used-car increase was the largest year-over-year percentage improvement for any month since October 2006.

The 4,903 total registrations was the highest for October since 2007 when 5,996 vehicles were registered after purchase by Rock River Valley residents.

George Schaffner, general manager of Lou Bachrodt Auto Mall and president of the Rockford New Car Dealers Association, said local lots were hit harder by the recession as a whole and that makes for a bigger rebound.

“If you look at Chevrolet, one of the brands we sell, nationally sales were up 6 percent in October. In the north central region for Chevrolet they were up 26 percent. We were up 68.6 percent,” Schaffner said.

“There wasn’t any promotion or incentives that haven’t been in place all year,” Schaffner said. “The biggest difference is consumer confidence. People are feeling better about their jobs and their situations. They are ignoring the doom and gloom in the national headlines.”

The Great Recession started in December 2007. The recession wasn’t particularly damaging though until September 2008 when it seemed as if the entire global banking community was on the verge of seizing.

Just a look at local car registrations shows how much that affected buyers. In September 2008, local car registrations actually were up slightly from the prior year. In October 2008, registrations fell 22 percent from the month before and were down 18.5 percent compared with October 2007.

October 2008 began a stretch of 26 straight months of year-over-year declines.

Tracking car registrations is a good — but not perfect — way of judging the health of local car dealers.

The Illinois secretary of state’s office tracks what county cars are registered in, not the county the vehicle was purchased. So if a Boone resident buys a truck in Rockford and registers it in Boone County, it counts as a Boone registration.

Still, the vast majority of vehicle buyers do buy in their home county.